Massive Volcanic Eruption Is Making Iceland Grow : The Two-Way : NPR: so far, this eruption isn’t spectacularly violent. It is a rift eruption but these are quite dangerous in serious ways. Namely, they can go on and on and on for years, decades and centuries. A number of Great Extinctions are directly caused by rift events such as the Siberian Traps or the Decca Traps. The gases put out by volcanoes have a very strong influence on climate and the rift events can change the climate in catastrophic ways and pays zero attention to feeble human demonstrations demanding ‘climate stability’.

for the last month, Iceland has been very active with many 4 to 5+ earthquakes every few hours. This means there is a dragon stirring down below and this is no brief, minor eruption. These quakes are in the 4-10 km below the earth’s surface which seems to be the domain of this fairly large dragon. On top lies this glacier and this can cause massive sudden flooding, for example, if the eruption worsens which I bet it will do.

It all began with a swarm of earthquakes in late August, according to Rikke Pedersen, with the Nordic Volcanological Center at the University of Iceland. Volcanologists watched as the tremors moved north about 25 miles. A fissure opened and lava began pouring forth.

There are many volcanists in Iceland who study these beasts and know them well but this still doesn’t mean they can predict with total accuracy, what a volcano will do next. Educated guesses are just that and we know that governments are leery about clearing people away from volcanoes for very long so people move close in and get killed.

Indeed, volcanism is a dangerous occupation with a higher death rate than other geological sciences.